Technology Enhanced Interactive Learning (TEIL)

The TEIL (Technology Enhanced Interactive Learning) classrooms provide an active learning environment within the classroom and additionally connects faculty and students outside of the classroom. This builds a virtual collaboration group consisting of classroom students, content providers, and students from off-campus. It enhances faculty resources in a flipped classroom where the faculty can spend valuable time with the students solving problems.

The design is distinctive by combining the established idea of collaborative group problem solving with adding the notion of video connectedness between the student collaboration groups, faculty member, and off-campus students.  The student is then connected to their collaborative group, other classroom groups, off-campus students, faculty member, and other off-campus content resources. This is accomplished by collaborative furniture containing document and video sharing technologies, Telepresense equipment connecting and managing all the work group tables electronically, and a specialized set of faculty development to consider the impact on learning the best pedagogy for course design.

Students work in groups of up to 6 in a "pod" with the ability to collaborate and display information locally and to the entire room from a wide array of devices.

College of Education 330 TEIL Classroom

Room specifications:

• Connected Classroom room technology.
• 8 collaborative tables with Steelcase furniture with 6 seats each.
• 8 display "pucks" to connect to monitors for document sharing.

City College B009 TEIL Classroom

Room specifications:

• Connected Classroom room technology.
• 6 collaborative tables with Steelcase furniture with 6 seats each.
• 6 display "pucks" to connect to monitors for document sharing.
• 1 Owl camera at the front of the room for instructor and classroom video.

Faculty comments:

• I felt myself drawn into student conversations in the TEIL room because there was so much going on, there was such a sense of immediacy. It made me rethink assignments; how does each meet the course objectives. I found myself making assignments more rigorous and more complex. The students really liked working in class. They brought a different energy that forced me to think about how to make the assignments meet their commitment.
• We started with group work, then I would supplement my lecture. It just felt more natural in the TEIL room—more collaborative. Students all had deliverables and they were all creating knowledge. Can’t do that in a regular classroom. There is a different cultural feel and expectations—the technology is in the foreground. It’s a nice room, it felt more friendly and more cohort in a class.
• The room doesn’t just challenge students in terms of being prepared for class, this class has challenged me in ways that nothing has. I am really looking forward to teaching in it again this Fall so that I can do things a little differently, more efficiently to achieve course objectives.